Acclaimed documentary filmmaker Errol Morris makes a welcome detour into (semi-)scripted fare with this six-part Netflix miniseries that follows one man's twist-filled, six-decade investigation into the mysterious death of his father—an event that is tied to the CIA's secret LSD experiments. It's based on a true story, and blends real-life interviews with dramatic scripted scenes starring Peter Sarsgaard alongside Molly Parker, Tim Blake Nelson, Bob Balaban, Michael Chernus, Jack O’Connell, Christian Camargo, and Scott Shepherd. Wormwood will also screen in a handful of theaters beginning today.

SAT / December 16

Christmas Shuttle

Drama

Hallmark, 8p

Eat, Sleep, BBQ

Reality

Food, 9p

Father Christmas

Drama

Lifetime, 10p

Snowed-Inn Christmas

Drama

Lifetime, 8p

Unbridled Love

Drama

HMM, 9p

SUN / December 17

Christmas Connection

Drama

HMM, 9p

A Christmas Story

Musical/Live event

7p

Live production of the Tony-nominated A Christmas Story: The Musical (which is in turn based on the classic holiday movie) stars Maya Rudolph, Jane Krakowski, and Chris Diamantopoulos, and features narration from Matthew Broderick.

Three-part, BBC-produced historical miniseries about the 17th century events that led to Guy Fawkes Day stars Kit Harington, Mark Gatiss, Peter Mullan, and Liv Tyler. The series airs across three consecutive nights.

Netflix's most expensive original feature to date is a $90 million effects-driven action film starring Will Smith and Joel Edgerton as cops in an alternate present-day world where fantasy creatures like elves, fairies, and orcs co-exist with humans. David Ayer (Suicide Squad) directs from a script by Max Landis (Chronicle).

January premieres

Tired of conventional holiday parade coverage? This Funny or Die-produced Amazon special finds Will Ferrell and Molly Shannon in character as local TV hosts Cord Hosenbeck and Tish Cattigan to provide commentary on this year's Rose Parade.

Temporarily (until the spring) displacing Brooklyn Nine-Nine on Tuesdays is this new Fox sitcom from from writer/producer Lon Zimmet (Superstore, Happy Endings, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt). This single-camera workplace comedy focuses on the crew and regular passengers of a regular weekend roundtrip flight between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. (Technically, they fly out of Burbank, but putting that city in the show title would probably be a series-killer.) Dylan McDermott heads a cast that also includes Ed Weeks, Kim Matula, Olivia Macklin, and Peter Stormare. Producers include the Funny or Die team of Will Ferrell and Adam McKay, plus Modern Family's Steve Levitan (who also directs the pilot).

Ryan Murphy's latest series is not an anthology but something a bit more conventional: a procedural. Co-created by Murphy along with his American Horror Story collaborators Brad Falchuk and Tim Minear, the series follows first responders (drawing from police, paramedics and firefighters) played by the likes of Angela Bassett, Peter Krause, Connie Britton, Aisha Hinds, and Rockmond Dunbar.

The 10-episode second season of the revived series (and 11th overall) returns the original cast (led by David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson) and includes appearances by Annabeth Gish, Robbie Amell, Lauren Ambrose, Karin Konoval, Barbara Hershey, and Haley Joel Osment. Only tonight's premiere and the season finale will center on the ongoing storyline, while the remaining eight episodes will be stand-alone adventures.

Fox's new Voice/American Idol competitor attempts to reinvent the singing competition by starting with just four strong contestants. Each week (and there are just six episodes in all), the four must defend their spots on the show against potential upstarts. The celebrity judging panel includes Sean Combs, DJ Khaled, Meghan Trainor, and label executive Charlie Walk, while Fergie serves as host.

Ensemble drama set in the South Side of Chicago comes from Master of None co-star Lena Waithe (who recently won an Emmy for her writing on that show). Rick Famuyiwa (Dope) directs the first episode, which stars Jason Mitchell (Straight Outta Compton),

The drama's second season features wholesale cast changes, with only leads Bryan Mills and Christina Hart returning. Newcomers include Adam Goldberg and Jessica Camacho, and the series will also be guided by a new showrunner (Person of Interest‘s Greg Plageman).

Producer Greg Berlanti's latest DC Comics series stars Cress Williams (Heart of Dixie) as the superhero vigilante—DC's first African-American superhero with his own stand-alone comics—who comes out of retirement to battle crime once again in order to keep his daughters safe. The series comes from writer-director Salim Akil (The Game). Note that it won't connect to the other DC shows currently on the CW (aka the "Arrowverse"), so don't expect a five-way crossover. But do expect Jill Scott to co-star as Lady Eve.

Ryan Murphy originally planned for a Hurricane Katrina-themed season of his American Crime Story anthology series to follow 2016's wildly acclaimed The People v. O.J. Simpson. But with that season now being retooled, the anthology's second installment will instead focus on the 1997 murder of fashion designer Gianni Versace (played by Edgar Ramirez) in Miami. Darren Criss, Penelope Cruz, and Ricky Martin also star. The story, which will begin with Versace's death and then go backwards to fill in the details, is derived from Maureen Orth's book Vulgar Favors.

Following on the heels of last year's hugely acclaimed nature miniseries Planet Earth II comes this five-part sequel to 2001's The Blue Planet. Filmed over four years and featuring a score by Hans Zimmer (including a collaboration with Radiohead) and narration by David Attenborough, Blue Planet II examines the variety of life present in our planet's oceans.

Fox's latest attempt at a hospital-set medical drama stars Emily VanCamp (Revenge) and Matt Czuchry (The Good Wife), and is told mainly through the point of view of a new resident (Manish Dayal), with the series beginning on his first day on the job. Merrin Dungey, Melina Kanakaredes, and Bruce Greenwood also star. Co-created by Mystic Pizza screenwriter Amy Holden Jones (with Code Black's Hayley Schore and Roshan Sethi), the drama also counts Antoine Fuqua and Phillip Noyce (who directs the pilot) as producers. Tonight's debut will run immediately after the conclusion of the NFC Championship game in all time zones. The series moves to its normal Monday 9p timeslot beginning tomorrow (1/22).

This six-part miniseries from director Steven Soderbergh and writer Ed Solomon (Men in Black) finds the director experimenting with the very nature of storytelling. Mosaic was first released as an iOS/Android app in November that allowed users to view various plot threads (involving a murder and two different time periods) from multiple and not necessarily linear perspectives, choosing how (and how deeply) to experience the full story. Now it comes to television as a more conventional series where Soderbergh calls the shots. Sharon Stone heads a cast that also includes Garrett Hedlund, Frederick Weller, Beau Bridges, Paul Reubens, Jennifer Ferrin, Devin Ratray, Michael Cerveris, and James Ransone. The series airs across five consecutive nights this week (with Friday's finale spanning two episodes).

Murder Is Forever

Drama

ID, 10p

Six-episode scripted series from writer James Patterson features dramatizations of true crime stories.

Matt Jones (Breaking Bad) plays a slacker who reluctantly enters the fitness industry after the passing of his father, an aerobics celebrity. Jane Seymour, Chris Diamantopoulos, and AnnaLynne McCord also star.

This six-part limited series (on the new network formerly known as Spike) depicts the infamous 1993 standoff between federal law enforcement and the Branch Davidian cult led by David Koresh (played by Taylor Kitsch) that eventually ended in a raid that left over 70 people dead. The cast also includes Michael Shannon, John Leguizamo, Andrea Riseborough, Rory Culkin, Melissa Benoist, Paul Sparks, Shea Whigham, Camryn Manheim, and Julia Garner.

THU / January 25

MVP: Most Valuable Performer

Reality/Live event

9p

FRI / January 26

The Adventures of Puss in Boots

Animation/Family

Dirty Money

Documentary

Alex Gibney investigates a major bank's role in laundering drug money in his new Netflix series.

A Futile and Stupid Gesture

Drama

David Wain directs a biopic about the life of National Lampoon co-founder Doug Kenney. Will Forte, Domhnall Gleeson, Martin Mull, and Joel McHale star.

February premieres

Netflix's 10-episode adaptation of Richard Morgan's 2002 sci-fi novel is set in the 25th century, when the entire human mind can be digitized, allowing people to transfer from one body to another and effectively live forever. Joel Kinnaman (The Killing) heads the cast as a former warrior who, after being imprisoned for 500 years, is given a chance to return to Earth if he can solve a crime that has become a rarity: murder. Martha Higareda, Dichen Lachman, Kristin Lehman, and James Purefoy also star, while Miguel Sapochnik (Game of Thrones) directs the opening episode.

Faster than you can say "Thelma & Louise," three suburban moms (Christina Hendricks, Mae Whitman, and Retta) decide to solve their money problems by robbing a local grocery store with toy guns. (Needless to say, it doesn't quite go according to plan.) Matthew Lillard and Reno Wilson co-star. The somewhat comedic drama, which gets the prized Monday timeslot following The Voice, comes from Scandal writer Jenna Banns.

Formerly known as By the Book, this multi-camera sitcom centers on a man (Jay R. Ferguson, The Real O'Neals) who decides to turn around his life by living according to the rules of the Bible. David Krumholtz and Camryn Manheim also star in the series, which is produced by Johnny Galecki and adapted by 2 Broke Girls writer Patrick Walsh from Esquire editor A.J. Jacobs's book The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible.

The third six-episode installment of Sundance's anthology series based on Joe R. Lansdale's books finds returning stars James Purefoy and Michael Kenneth Williams joined by Louis Gossett Jr., Corbin Bernsen, and Andrew Dice Clay.

After a 15-season run on Fox (and two years off the air), the one-time music competition hit returns on a new network. Ryan Seacrest returns as host, while the judging panel features Katy Perry, Luke Bryan, and Lionel Richie.

The Good Wife's Alan Cumming takes the lead in this adaptation of a novel by James Patterson about a former CIA agent turned professor who is lured back into his old life to help the NYPD catch a serial killer. Naveen Andrews, Bojana Novakovic, and Sharon Leal also star in a series created by former Royal Pains producer Michael Rauch. Marc Webb (The Amazing Spider-Man) directs the pilot.

Parenthood and Friday Night Lights producer Jason Katims returns to NBC with an adaptation of Michael Sokolove's based-on-a-true-story book Drama High. Josh Radnor (How I Met Your Mother) stars as a teacher at a small town high school who takes over the school's failing drama department and mounts a big musical production. Rosie Perez and Auli'i Cravalho (Moana) also star in a series that is already earning comparisons to early Glee. The series debuts tonight following the season finale of This Is Us before moving to to its regular Tuesday 9p timeslot next week.

This 10-episode adaptation of the novel by Dan Simmons is inspired by true events—specifically, the Royal Navy's 19th century search for the Northwest Passage—and stars Jared Harris, Tobias Menzies, and Ciarán Hinds.

Six-episode British series about a serial killer reveals the story in reverse (hence the odd title), beginning with the capture of the suspect. Richard Dormer and Jodi Balfour star. The drama comes from The Missing creators Harry and Jack Williams, and subsequent seasons (if any) would follow a different story.

2019 premieres

2020 premieres

SUN / February 23, 2020

92nd Annual Academy Awards

Live event

tbd

2021 premieres

SUN / February 28, 2021

93rd Annual Academy Awards

Live event

tbd

Did we miss something?Don't see a show here? Check our 2016-17 season scorecard for an alphabetical listing with scores and premiere dates. If you know of a listing that should be included in this calendar, feel free to contact us at editorial@metacritic.com or post the details in the comments section below. (And we thank everyone who has already been doing so!)

I can't thank you enough for maintaining this site. If you would ever consider adding a field for "Date Added" I would be so grateful as it would make it easier to pick out the shows which have been added since the last visit.